Supreme Court allows Trump to fire independent agency members

The case raises broad constitutional questions aboutwhether Congress can set up agencies that prevent the president from removing officials without cause.

April 9, 2025, 4:30 PM EDT By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON —The Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered that, for now, President Donald Trump is not required to reinstate two members of independent federal agencies he wants to fire.

The provisional decision affects Gwynne Wilcox, a member of the National Labor Relations Board, and Cathy Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board.

Chief Justice John Roberts issued an order that temporarily blocked lower court rulings that said the two officials should be reinstated.

The court will decide what next steps to take in the case after hearing from lawyers for the two ousted officials.

Although the Supreme Court previously upheld protections against members of independent agencies being removed without cause, the current conservative majority has reversed course in recent cases affecting other agencies.

Wilcox was appointed to the body that adjudicates labor disputes by then-President Joe Bidenin 2021. Her five-year term would have expired in 2026. Under federal law, thepresident can only fire members "for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office."

Biden appointed Harris in 2022 to a seven-year term that has similar protections against removal. The Merit Systems Protection Board handles disputes involving federal employees.

Trump sought to fire both soon after taking office.

Wilcox and Harris both sued and won at the district court level. An appeals court panel initially ruled for Trump but, in a later ruling in which the entire bench of judges participated, reversed course in a 7-4 vote, prompting the administration to go to the Supreme Court.

In recent rulings, the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has ruled that provisions protecting single heads of independent agencies were unconstitutional. But a 1935 precedent that upheld the structure of multimember agencies remains on the books.

Conservative lawyers who favor broad presidential powerhave long argued that independent agencies are not sufficiently accountable to the democratically elected president under the Constitution's separation of powers provision. The president should be able to fire agency heads at will, they argue.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in court papers that,because of the lower court rulings, Wilcox and Harris are effectively "exercising the president's executive power over the president's express objection."

Lurking in the background of any effort to overturn the 1935 ruling, Humphrey's Executor v. United States, is whether thepresident would have the power to fire members of the Federal Reserve, which traditionally operates independently of the White House.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-allows-trump-fire-independent-agency-members-rcna200492

(Research on both these orgs and boards, they are both highly corrupt and have had 100s if not 1000s of complaints. The names of the agencies are always the opposite.)

Board Member

Gwynne Wilcox was confirmed by the Senate on September 6, 2023 to serve a second term as Board Member ending August 27, 2028. Ms. Wilcox previously served as a Member of the Board from August 4, 2021 until August 27, 2023, and she served as Chair of the Board from December 17, 2024 to January 20, 2025. On January 27, 2025, President Donald J. Trump removed Ms. Wilcox from the Board prior to her term’s expiration in 2028.

Ms. Wilcox is the first Black woman to serve on the Board since its inception in 1935, and is also the first Black woman to serve as Chair of the NLRB. In November 2021, Wilcox was presented with the Honorable Bernice B. Donald Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Legal Profession Award by the American Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Law Section. The award is given to a member, law firm, corporation, organization or academic institution “that has demonstrated leadership in and commitment to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the legal profession.”

Previous to her appointment, Wilcox was a senior partner at Levy Ratner, P.C., a New York City labor and employment law firm. While there, she served as Associate General Counsel of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East and as a labor representative to the NYC Office of Collective Bargaining. Prior to joining Levy Ratner, she worked as a Field Attorney at Region 2 of the NLRB in Manhattan. Wilcox holds a bachelor’s from Syracuse University, a J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law-Newark, and is a Fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.

https://www.nlrb.gov/bio/gwynne-a-wilcox

Trump targets two first term critics, a law firm and the American Bar Association

Devan Cole, Donald Judd, Hannah Rabinowitz and Evan Perez, April 9, 2025

President ==Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he would use the power of the Justice Department to go after two officials who were highly critical of him during his first term in office, including one whose anonymously written New York Times op-ed claiming he was part of the “resistance” to Trump’s presidency captivated the nation for years.

The announcement by Trump that he was targeting former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor, who penned the op-ed, and former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs, whose rejection of Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election led to his ousting, comes as the president continues to seek retribution on his perceived enemies in ways big and small.

Executive orders signed by Trump on Wednesday strip Taylor and Krebs of any existing security clearance they may still hold since leaving office and orders the Justice Department to probe both former officials.

The president did not specify any alleged wrongdoing by the men that necessitated investigations by the department. But, speaking in the White House, Trump made clear he thinks he knows what the results should be.

“I think what he did, and he wrote a book, ‘Anonymous,’ said all sorts of lies, bad things– and I think it’s, I think it’s like a traitor, like, it’s like spying,” Trump said of Taylor. “I think it’s a very important case, and I think he’s guilty of treason, if you want to know the truth, but we’ll find out.”

Taylor rose to prominence in 2020 after he revealed that he was the author of the famous 2018 New York Times op-ed titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” In it, he wrote that “many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” Taylor went on to publish a book critical of Trump, who insisted he did not remember Taylor during his time in the administration.

Taylor responded on Twitter, saying, “I said this would happen. Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”

Krebs was fired by Trump weeks after the 2020 election after he rejected Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud. On Wednesday, the president zeroed in on those comments, blasting him over his assessment of the contest.

“I think he said this is the safest election we’ve ever had, and yet, every day you read in the papers about more and more fraud that’s discovered,” Trump said. “He’s the fraud. He’s a disgrace. So, we’ll find out whether or not it was a safe election, and if it wasn’t, he’s got a big price to pay, and he’s a bad guy.”

Krebs declined CNN’s request for comment.

The retaliatory actions come the same day Trump took aim at another law firm whose work has drawn his ire. Through an executive order that, among other things, immediately suspends security clearances for employees of Susman Godfrey LLP, the president added the firm to a growing list of law firms on the receiving end of his anger.

The firm represented Dominion Voting Systems in a major defamation lawsuit it brought against Fox News over the network’s 2020 election lies. The right-wing news outlet settled the case in 2023 for a staggering $787 million.

Also on Wednesday, the Justice Department took aim at the American Bar Association, saying employees will no longer be allowed to spend money to engage with group.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an internal memo obtained by CNN that department attorneys cannot travel to, or speak at, ABA events in their official capacity. Career employees, however, are still able to maintain their ABA membership.

The move comes after the ABA publicly sided with several firms that the Trump administration has attacked through earlier executive orders born out of political retaliation that restrict their ability to do business with the federal government.

Several of the firms targeted are fighting to block the executive orders in court, with some seeing initial success through emergency orders that have temporarily blocked Trump’s efforts.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/09/politics/trump-critics-executive-orders-taylor-krebs/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc

Former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Chris Krebs

1/24/9/25

This afternoon, President Donald Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum that instructs the Department of Justice and “other aspects of [his] government” to investigate Chris Krebs and his acts as the former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). At the signing, President Trump’s White House staff secretary Will Scharf stated:

“This is a man who weaponized his position against free speech in the election context and the context of COVID-19. This is a similar Presidential Memorandum to the one you just signed. It addresses his access to government existent clearances he might have and further instructs your Department of Justice, other aspects of your government, to investigate some of the malign acts he participated in while he was still head of CISA.”

Before signing the memorandum, President Trump rehashed the consequences of the stolen 2020 election, including the deaths from the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, the Russia-Ukraine war, and October 7th.

President Trump called it “a very corrupt election” and said “they used COVID to cheat.” He called Krebs a “wise-guy” and referenced his absurd statement almost immediately following the 2020 Election, calling it the “most secure in U.S. history.”

As an added bonus, it appears Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, was present in the Oval Office for the signing of this declaration. Very interesting!

On November 12, 2020, Chris Krebs said that “government and industry representatives from the election security community issued a joint statement reflecting a consensus perspective that the 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history.”

Secret CISA Vulnerabilities Report Prior to the 2020 Election

It was an absolutely absurd assertion coming just nine days after the election, and only five days after Joe Biden was proclaimed the winner by the Mockingbird Media. In February 2024, Yehuda Miller uncovered a 2020 CISA report titled “Election Infrastructure Subsector Cyber Risk Summary,” that was published in March 2021.

The Executive Summary reads:“This report provides analysis, findings, and recommendations derived from non-attributable cybersecurity trends observed between November 3, 2019, and November 3, 2020 – Election Year 2020 (EY20).”

CISA’s analysis of the available data assessed EI (election infrastructure) entities found:

76% of EI entities for which CISA performed a Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (RVA) had spearphishing weaknesses, which provide an entry point for adversaries to launch attacks;

48% of entities had a critical or high severity vulnerability on at least one internet-accessible host, providing potential attack vectors to adversaries;

39% of entities ran at least one risky service on an internet-accessible host, providing the opportunity for threat actors to attack otherwise legitimate services; and

34% of entities ran unsupported operating systems (OSs) on at least one internet-accessible host, which exposes entities to compromise.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/president-trump-revoke-security-clearance-open-investigation-former/

>>22890507

(Trump should not forget the guy's last name Bright, there were a lot of other traitors in the group)

2/2

Whether or not the findings of this report were known to Krebs when he made that reckless statement less than a week after a “winner” had been declared is not known, however, the fact that a year-long investigation into the vulnerabilities and the imminent report should have absolutely been known prior to that statement being made.

The report was set as TLP:Amber, which means Traffic Light Protocal. “Amber” means that “information that’s for limited disclosure and may be shared on a need-to-know basis, either only to those within an organization or its clients.”

Mass Censorship

The Gateway Pundit reported extensively on the Department of Homeland Security and CISA's involvement, under Director Krebs, in the censorship operation that took place in 2020, regarding COVID-19 and the 2020 Election. The two government entities worked with the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a collaboration of Digital Forensics Research Lab, Graphika, Stanford Internet Observatory, and the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public.

In the EIP's Long Fuse Report, they laid out a massive censorship operation and their efforts to corroborate between government officials and social media companies to remove what they deemed "misinformation" and "disinformation."

SolarWinds Hack

In December 2020, following the 2020 Presidential Election, CISA announced a massive sophisticated supply chain hack against SolarWinds, an IT management, network monitoring, and system performance optimization firm used by the federal government.

The attack infiltrated SolarWinds' Orion software platform and distributed malicious updates to over 18,000 organizations worldwide. At the time, Dominion Voting Systems was using SolarWinds' software on their system, according to a report from The Gateway Pundit in December 2020.

Chris Krebs would coincidentally go on to form the Krebs Stamos Group with Alex Stamos, the former Chief Security Officer for Facebook and the Director of the Stanford Internet Observatory. The same Stanford Internet Observatory that spearheaded the EIP and the 2020 censorship efforts.

As if that wasn't enough of a "Small World" connection, their first client, according to TechCrunch, was none other than SolarWinds.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency was established and signed into law in 2018. Chris Krebs, an environmental sciences major and Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia and George Mason University, respectively, was designated the first acting Director.

Here are some other stories The Gateway Pundit has reported on regarding Chris Krebs:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/president-trump-revoke-security-clearance-open-investigation-former/